I first got into String theory after reading Brian Greene's first book (The Elegant Universe) on the subject years ago. In the interim before his 2nd book I would google for updates to the overall theory.
I've been out of the loop for a while now. What's new? Is the theory still at the leading edge of a possible "theory of everything"? Has new mathematics yet been derived to help explain soem of the difficult concepts?
I may not be up on the latest developments, but last time I checked, there was still no way to experimentally verify any of the different flavors of string theory.
This makes me question if it is really science - if there is no testability, is it really anything more then some (very beautiful) math?
Super string theory is on the same level as intelligent design without testability.
Wasn't there a paper a few months ago that basically proposed an experiment that could be a disproof of a certain aspect of string theory, but a positive result was predicted by several theories, and therefore was a pretty useless test?
It made news solely due to the fact that here was finally something, however minor it might possibly be, testable by string theory. That's not really a very glowing endorsement of a system.
There are several variants of string theory that have been disproved by various methods in the past.
So true. As far as I'm concerned, string theory supporters are more priest than physisict.
I agree that String Theory is not science but then neither were Enstien's theories while they were still in the "thought experiment" stage. Thought experimenents and pure mathematics are not science, but they can lead to experimnts that either confirm or refute the predictions. One of the reasons for building bigger particle accelerators is to try and find some of the predicted particles of string theory.
In my reading on string theory, I have come across statements about 11 dimensions. I assumed that were talking about higher dimensions of space/time which would have in turn predicted parallel universes. As I dug further, I found that they were calling such items as spin and frequency as "dimensions". To be consistent with quantum mechanics, it seems that spin and frequency should be called "properties" like charge and mass. I think it is an important distinction because "properties" of particles are not as "sexy" and "Sci-fi" as a universe with 11 "dimensions".
Also, is there a good link to a site that explains string theory in terms that doesn't require a PHD in quantum mechanics to understand. I have read the Wikopedia site, and I watched the "elegant universe" on PBS, but if any of you have other sites to recommend, I'd appreciate it.
Not to be glib, but the most intelligent (only intelligent?) think that I've heard come from String Theory is the idea that all theories of physics dealing with a number of dimensions (3 + time in Newtonian, 3 w/time in Relativistic, 11/12/23 depending on who you talk to in string theory) are actually subsets of the "true" physics which exists independent of dimensions.
I remember a physics teacher explaining that sound has 5 dimensions, in that a vector describing a sound wave must include three velocity dimensions, pressure, and density (I might have the last one wrong...). So it's not that these dimensions are just properties, but that any representation of "Strings" requires at least 11 dimensions.
I think the "official" String theory interpretation of dimensions 5-11 is that they only have an effect on quantum scales, so we'll never experience them directly.
I don't think it's fair to say string theory is equivalent to ID. ID is, for a start, utterly discredited and is not really a scientific theory, it's a theology. String theory was invented as a solution to the problem of describing aspects of the physical universe. So far it's preditions have not been successful tested but that doesn't mean it's not a credible *theory*. Theoretical science is still science. It becomes *knowledge* when experiment catches up with theory.
The problem is one of experiments. It's not as if there is a string theory experiment that has been proposed that's difficult to engineer, it's that there hasn't been one proposed.
When SR/GR were defined, it was very simple to walk through the repercussions and design experiments that would support or disprove the predictions. Even though some weren't possible immediately, it was known that they could be tested.
I think at this point it is a hypothesis waiting on technology to advance to a point to be able to test it. At this point it would be folly to bank too much on it being correct so advancing further down the path on what may be a false premise should be avoided. I think anyone touting it's virtues and saying it is correct are bordering on blind faith which is not a good thing in the sciences. Though to be fair I don't think there are many scientists doing that.
String theory isn't anything like 'intelligent design'. It is a (speculative, fairly radical) extension of quantum field theory, and has led to a large number of beautiful mathematical results. The notion of dualities that came up in stringy context have recently found some application in mathematical physics. (For instance, people have tried to exploit the AdS/CFT correspondence for various condensed matter and hydrodynamics questions.) And string theory has had a strong social impact on physics, by (among other things) making extra dimensions seem less outre and so on.
That being said, the theory is still poorly understood, 30 years after it began. It hasn't made any (practically testable) experimental predicictions, and no one knows whether it's going to any time soon. And some non-stringy particle theorists sometimes suspect that string theorists have fallen into a mathematical rabbit hole...
I'm in (non-stringy) particle theory, and my feelings on string theory are that it's (still) basically fascinating mathematics. How much physics is in there is less clear - but I think people should keep whacking away at it to figure it out. (Just not me. I'm not smart enough, and I prefer staying closer to the 'real world' (ha!) in my work.)
I think some of the string evangelism that has been directed at the public is rather regrettable, as it's a very speculative idea... but then again, generating excitement for physics and science is great, even if you lure people in by sexy promises of (unproven) extra dimensions and whatnot.
And I'd like to reiterate that some of the stuff from string theory is just COOL, and will probably be useful somewhere, somehow after all --- even if not in the context we expect.
That last is a quasi-religious notion, of course. Take it as you will.
In the overall context of science, the idea that String theory actually represents our universe is only a *hypothesis*. It will become a real *Scientific Theory* only when it verified is based on independent experimental observations from multiple researchers.
Calling it String Theory with a capital 'T' just because it is a mathematical framework proposed by theoretical physicists is just plain wrong - it still isn't a real scientific theory because there is no evidence.
Exactly. Gravity Probe B took 40 years of engineering to make happen, but the fact that the test could be done was identified before the first satellite was even launched!
If someone could propose a test, but with the caveat that it is "50 years away", then fine. To my knowledge, not a single test has even been proposed for String theory.
As do I. I want to hear about something that explains anomalies in our current understanding of the universe and can be tested. For instance, explaining the Pioneer anomaly would be great, and a theory of everything that did that would be 1000% more valid in my eyes then String theory.
I know what you mean, but there's an unfortunate terminology clash here.
It is true that when the way science works is described in school, there is big distinction made between the words hypothesis and theory - and it's a good distinction! Unfortunately, this is just not the terminology used in physics. Instead, 'theory' is often used as a synonym for 'model' or 'framework', without necessarily implying that it's any more tested.
This doesn't really confuse anyone in the field, but it makes 'public relations' difficult.
(No one takes so-called 'phi^4 theory' seriously, but everyone calls it that nonetheless [it's a toy quantum field theory [see, I can't avoid using that word!] that has serious diseases]... but if someone who isn't in the field hears of it, they might wonder what the hell...)
When string theorists refer to 'string theory', they really mean 'string framework' or something like that - they aren't actually trying to say that it's a Theory in the other sense.
Yes, this terminology clash sucks.
If you accept ST as science, then you need to accept ID. It is that simple.
That is an apologist attitude. I remember seeing Hawking videos when I was in undergrad, and one of the highlights of the tapes was the new and exciting field of String Theory and how it would take off where QM failed.
Back then, physicists jazzed it up and over sold it for the most simplist of reasons --- Funding $$.
All of Einstein's theories were based on extrapolating from experimental evidence. Special relativity, for example, was based on the physical experimental evidence that the speed of light is constant.
String Theory isn't based on any experimental evidence. It's not like there is experimental proof that quarks are made up of strings and String Theory extrapolated from that fact.
That's why Einstein's work is Science and String Theory would be better labeled as "String Mathematics".
I think you may be missing how theoretical physics works. In short, a large part of theoretical particle physics, as it is actually practiced, might be termed mathematical physics. What does this mean?
Let me give you a specific example that I've worked on in the past. In the real world there's quarks and gluons, and there's three 'colors' for the quarks. (3*3 giving, er, eight , for the gluons, for technical reasons...). The theory that describes the behavior of quarks and gluons is called QCD. Now, QCD is an odd beast. Almost all problems people work on these days are too hard to solve directly - you can't just write down a solution to them. However, you can make approximations, and solve them approximately. But QCD is even harder than that: for high energy collisions, approximations work great, and we can confirm it to very high precision. But for low-energy stuff (like, you know, protons, neutrons, atoms, and everything around you), it is horribly intractable for some deep technical reasons. (That aren't too hard to explain - I can do that if you want.)
So what to do... well, you get creative. Some very clever people in the 70s had the crazy idea of changing the number of colors in the theory. Remember, in the real world, the number of colors is three, period. So changing that means your theory no longer describes the real world.
But the amazing thing is that QCD with a very large number of colors actually gets simpler! It's still horribly intractable, but less so, and you can extract all sorts of qualitative information from this bizarre different theory that sort-of carries over to the real world of three colors.
(Actually, QCD in the large N_c limit, which is what I've described above, looks suspiciously like a stringy theory in a qualitative sense. In fact, this was more or less the genesis of 'the' string theory - people tried to make the connection precise, failed, but found some cool mathematical structures, and off they went.)
You can do even crazier stuff, like give each quark TWO colors, taking you even further away from the real world. (I've done some stuff like this in some previous work.)
So why do all this? Well, screwing around with our frameworks is a way of probing them, trying to understand their structure, and trying to leverage that understanding back onto nature, in actual physical, experimental problems. Sometimes people end up going off and gallivanting is very abstract, mathematical pastures, and never do make it back - that's part of the game. But sometimes, you start doing some crazy abstract thing, and it turns out five years later that that's exactly what you need to understand some physics question. The history of physics is littered with examples of this.
This is how string theory started, and this is how it has kept going: by trying to come up with an explanation for the strong nuclear force, finding that that doesn't work directly, but ooh, other stuff happens! Gravity pops up somehow. So then people got excited, and started trying to explore the formal consequences of this. And so on down the rabbit hole. Amusing new mathematical results have cropped up frequently enough that people stayed excited enough to keep working on it. And very recently some stringy ideas (really, tools) are finding some tentative applications in more down-to-earth theoretical physics, as I mentioned before.
I'm not in string theory, and I'm not for a reason - like I said before, I'm not smart enough, and moreover I like being more connected to the real world. I tend to think that string theory gets too much attention for what it is, and the recent landscape and anthropic argument stuff gives me allergic reactions. But claiming that string theory is anything like ID is unjustified and unsupportable, and I think comes from not understanding how theoretical physics really works.
Well at best, it is mathematics, not science.
I've gotten into similar discussions with theoretical chemists. At the end of the day, if you can't come up with a single experiment to verify your model, then it doesn't have much impact in reality.
And considering ST doesn't have any hard data at all to support it at all, it is a house of cards. It has been decades now, and it still hasn't delivered. As has been mentioned, come up with an experiment that we don't have the tech to do "yet", come up with something tangeable ... something.
Mathematics? Sure ok.
Yes and no. You seem to insist on a rather dogmatic separation between experiment and theory in defining 'science', and that's just not going to cover a large amount of activity that is, well, science. Take the example I cited above about the large N limit of QCD. You will NEVER see quarks with an infinite number of colors. Nonetheless, thinking about such things is useful. (Example: why can you get away with thinking about protons without thinking about virtual quarks much of the time? Well, in the large N limit, quarks loops are suppressed, so to the extent the real world is close to the large N world, that gives you some idea why quarks loops aren't too important for at least some observables. )
In physics especially, theory is VERY powerful, and the links to mathematics are very important. I think that it's silly to dismiss a huge region of very productive inquiry as unscientific just because it's still poorly understood, and applies to very high energies.
By the way, I too think that the lack of experimental evidence for string theory is troubling. String theory gets too much attention in the community given what is.
But just because no one's figured out a way to test it as yet is hardly a reason to just give up. Quantum gravity generically has that problem - you'd expect QG corrections to become important near the Planck scale generically, and we ain't going to probe that one directly any time soon.
But there are good reasons to think that the standard model should crap out at around 1 TeV, and we'll probably see new physics at the LHC. Not strings, mind you, unless something hilarious happens (like compact extra dimensions, and maybe not even then.)
The big problem is that string theory is still poorly understood. That's an argument to have some people keep working on it.
In the meantime, the rest of the community does other stuff entirely, occasionally steals some of the string theorist's shiny new mathematical tools, listens to string talks with skepticism, and makes jokes about string theorists and their abstract pursuits.
As you stated, assuming extra colors for quarks (even if that's not actually true) allowed for the creation of models that more closely predict low energy physics, something we can observe and validate the model against.
That's a lot different from string theory, which after decades still has nothing to validate against.
Don't get me wrong, I think it is a field worth investigation, but I wish that other physics theories received as much public attention, as well as a reasonable explanation of some of the different ways the term "theory" is used.
You're right, that's true. I too wish other theories received as much (or more) PR, and I wish 'theory' didn't have such odd usages. Unfortunately, changing the way physics people talk is hard, and things like string theory is just sexy for PR - it's harder to get people excited about say large N qcd than about gee-whiz things like extra dimensions and whatnot.
It's also true that large N QCD has implications that can be (sort of) tested, whereas for string theory there hasn't been anything yet. That sucks. But we still don't even know what string theory is! (We being defined broadly here.)
The reason I came in here to (sort of) defend string theory is just because some of the criticisms of it seem kind of over the top. String models have problems, of course, and I tend to think that it'd be better for stringy people to work on them rather than publicizing their work. Then again, Brian Greene's books (for instance) are well written expositions of physics, in addition to being string theory PR books, and getting people excited about science is good.
I think it's clear what's going on: particle physics as a field has been sick for a long time. There hasn't been any really new data since the early 80s - the standard model just works, and that's about it. We've recently had some tantalizing hints of new stuff with the cosmological constant, dark matter, neutrino masses - but no new results from colliders.
So people went off following their nose down mathematical rabbit holes. The LHC is coming on soon, and lots and lots of people are rediscovering an interest in, well, experimental confirmation of their work. Even string theorists are looking to connect their work to the real world more these days...
(Not that it's succeeded, yet. There are some nice hints that at least some of the tools that came from string theory, like the ads/cft correspondence may be very useful. Or not.*)
* - Disclaimer - I've done some work on the 'or not' side of things.
First off, Welcome Back,
Okay, back OT: Frank Wilczek's lecture on The Origin of Mass and the Feebleness of Gravity @ MIT.
I'm a bit of a physics groupie and back in 2004, when he won the Nobel prize, I went a bit ga-ga over his work on extending QCD. I recommend actually watching the 75mins. lecture, but for those needing the cliffs notes, he arrives at quarks, mass and a unification of the four known forces as the result of spontaneous symmetry breaking of a more intricate spacetime.
Against that: strings, so far, have an advantage right now vs. point-like particles in theoretical physics ( e.g. the standard model ) in that as a 1-d primitive, their elements have the crucial property of continuity and thereby seem to avoid all the prima facie spacetime incongruities that Zeno of Elea underscored 2500 yrs. ago. So, that's some mud they can fling in the eyes of more conservative theorists...at the risk of supporting an unseemly speculation ( re: atomism ) based on the metaphysics of an ancient Greek!
Ugh. Do I have to install Real? Is there a direct link instead of having to stream?
The huge difference between your QCD example and String is that quarks have been experimentally verified. You are building a model off something that is ... REAL.
Sure you give it qualities that are not real, but as you say it is an approximation.
In String, you have nothing to base it on. No evidence that strings exist, no way to test if they do. They just magically are there in some non-interactable black box.
That is the difference between science and not science. You need some sort of empirical data as a starting point. Is there one for string? No, as far as I am aware, there most certainly is not.
That is why I put it on the same level as ID. Sure ID doesn't have fancy equations, but it has the same lack of evidence or way to test for it.
Assume God exists with no proof.
Assume Strings exist with no proof.
This is a mind trap.
We treat protons like protons b/c they act like single particles in the real world. There is a mountain of data on protons, and in general how atoms work and the theory has built itself around that evidence.
The only way to see the sub-boson constituents, is to do some very wacky experiment to smash it. A whole field of theory, chemistry, is built around not dealing with quarks at all. Not b/c of the QCD trick, but b/c of how atoms and molecules work in reality.
We treat a proton as unified object b/c it behaves that way, not because of some QCD trick. You have it the other way around. The QCD trick is an approximation to accommodate this real world observation.
Those theories that are actually based on actual data are fine, which most of theoretical physics falls into.
It isn't so much the lack of evidence, so much as the lack of a thought experiment to be even a proof of concept. It doesn't have even that. How can a scientist sell this as science with a straight face, it is very disingenuous.
It is cute idea on a napkin, but has no place in text books or documentaries. All ideas start off shaky and baseless at some point. It is how new theories are born. Which is fine, but you can't start willy nilly accepting a theory b/c it sounds/looks cool.
Scientists always go on about the scientific method and it being the main reason why ID can't be in a text book, all the while they put on the rose tinted glasses when String Theory is a topic. The only reason it slides through imo, is b/c no one really understands what it is.
String is only for "smart people".
(which is the way the documentary that I mentioned sold string a decade ago)
Come up with a way to test it then. Stop calling it a theory or science until there is either some evidence, or at the bare minimum an idea on how to get some evidence. Until then, the idea needs to stay out of the media and text books.
I don't get this logic. Something that is completely baseless, has no evidence and has no way to provide evidence is poorly understood? It is completely made up dude, even if you fix the internal logic of String until it is perfectly understood --- it won't have anything to ground it into reality.
It would just be very good fiction.
violin? How is this any different than the rest of the whole scientific field?
All that does is give props to the mathematics, not the physics side of it. Math is a very vital tool, but it in of itself is not science. String Theory can produce the most wonderful equations ever conceived in the next century (or five!), but without evidence of strings, the theory itself is utter esoteric BS.
Move the string theorists to the math department and call it a day.
No love from Google video. C'mon. Do it. You know you want it.
But, seriously: there's a simple method to convert Real's proprietary format to something open like mpeg2 with a *nix box. When the movie starts, login using your admin password and ... **loading** .... [message string dropped due to disconnection]
Your concerns apply to just about any theory of quantum gravity. Naively, QG corrections come in at the Planck scale. We aren't going to get to the Planck scale. Ergo, we might as well give up and never think about QG.
This may be the way to go; but that would be boring.
The inability of string theory to predict anything useful is... shitty. (Actually, it sort of predicts the number of spacetime dimensions, via the famous anomaly cancellation results from the 80s. Unfortunatelly, the prediction's too big by a factor of 3 or so =) So then you get into Calabi-Yau manifolds, compactifications, and who knows what else...)
But one has to understand where this failure comes from. The reason people can't calculate physical observables in string theory is that, well, it's really bloody hard to do that, so hard that no one knows how to do it. The structure of string theory is still poorly understood, and there are few non-perturbative tools.
One possible interpretation of this state of affairs is that string theory just doesn't work, and call it a day. Another is that there's more to be done, and some people (not most of the field, as it sometimes feels) should keep working on it.
By the way, before you bring it up: I don't the anthropic arguments that have lately come into vogue among some string theorists are scientific, and that seems like a deeply silly game to me.
I am deeply confused by your claim that my description of the suppression of quark loops in large N_c QCD as a 'mind trap'. Enough so that I'm not sure how to respond short of typing in a mini-course on QCD...
Oh, and a nota bene: protons don't have "'sub-boson' constituents". Protons are fermions, as are quarks, while gluons are bosons. It's unclear what a 'sub-boson' would be.
Likening string theory to intelligent design is unpleasant and unjustified rhetoric. Intelligent design starts from the premise that everything is created by invisible pink manatees, and pretty much ends there. String theory starts by trying (not succesfully) to describe particle spectra as relativistic string excitations, and develops a mathematical framework from there to do lots of other stuff, some interesting and some not.
At worst, string theory is mathematics. It is nothing like intelligent design. To claim that it is is either ignorant or intellectually dishonest.
I think I'll leave things there.
I know diddly about QG so I am not going to talk about it. Though at this point I will admit I am a little intrigued. It does have a cool name after all. Anyway, I think I should at this time, point out the principle driver behind my stance on this sort of issue.
Not so recently, in the chemistry field it has become popular to use computations to make predictions and to model chemical pathways. A lot of approximations are made, as a complete simulation of anything even remotely complex (more than 5 or 6 atoms) or interesting is beyond even modern supercomputing power to "fully simulate". The norm has always been to run a simulation and to also run an actual wet lab experiment to couple the two together.
In the last 5 years, a lot of garbage has gotten published. And I call it garbage, b/c they are simulation reports that flat out say a certain pathway is undertaken in a chemical reaction without actually going into a lab and running an experiment to back up the digital findings. The findings could be right, but they could also be wrong and no data makes the simulations a bit useless.
A typical question from the older more experienced professors during a seminar will inevitably ask "How do you know this is what is going on??".
In the meanwhile, the younger chemists gobble all the crud up by the spoonful and take it as gospel. It is poor form and spins science into something it isn't -- cool sounding fiction.
In social/political debates surrounding Intelligent Design, scientists are always quick to point out why ID does not qualify as science (hey I'm one of those). I've already mentioned this point, but I am doing so again to fully drive the message home. Through these ID debates, science has been defined quite specifically and given a very specific set of requirements, and String Theory does not meet it similarly to the way ID does not.
From a completely unbiased scientific stance, how can I take String seriously? If I went to a chemistry seminar and someone started going on about a new type of chemistry theory, but he didn't:
-fully understand it
-couldn't explain it well
-doesn't know how to study it
-has no evidence
-has no idea how to prove it
I can assure you, all the chemists would roll their eyes, and get up and walk out on the presenter. The issue isn't that it is poorly understood, the issue is that there is absolutely no evidence known and no way to get any.
If I accept String, I might as well accept Intelligent Design -- or even better -- the existence of the One Power from the Robert Jordan books. Of course I am being facetious. Hopefully you understand where I am coming from now.
Can't believe no one has posted this yet -
We're all in agreement that String Theory is a misnomer. String Physics or String Mathematics would be more appropriate because it wouldn't imply a working model.
However I think you're being too severe on what you deem worthy of the title of science. For example suppose your chemistry seminar was held in 1913 by Neils Bohr. In the seminar he described his quantum model of the hydrogen atom and explained how quantum mechanics would revolutionize chemistry. He didn't really understand his own theory (or he would have seen the flaws), didn't have anything to base it on other than some of the mathematics could be made to match experimental data (same as String), and the theory itself turned out to be wrong. Yet Bohr's quantum model became the prototype for quantum mechanics that was correct and able to be experimentally proven.
And the hydrogen atom has DISCRETE bands in the UV/VIS spectra and it was the main reason behind the development of his ideas of atoms containing DISCRETE energy levels that electrons reside in.
That is why he developed what came to be known as the Bohr's Model of an atom. Neils Bohr embodies the epitome of the scientific method in modern science.
And a point of clarity, the scientific method itself is not 100% right nor should it be expected to be so. It is about basing ideas around solid evidence and expanding what is known using deductive and inductive reasoning.
The wiki does a pretty good idea of explaining it:
from Wiki:Scientific Method
edit - I should also point out that Bohr's model did not end up being wrong. It actually does hold up and does work - so long as there is only 1 electron involved. Once you add in a second electron, it all goes to shit.
You don't like String "theory." Or you don't like the name. Okay. I like it, but I'm not going to take you on there because you know tons more about it than I do.
Where I will take you on is this ID comparison. There is a fundamental difference between something that is provably untestable (now and for all time), and something for which no test yet exists. If I may coin a term, ID is not just untestable but ANTI-testable. It is designed (whether intelligently or not) to be immune to any test. And done so calculatedly with intent to deceive. You have some valid problems with Strings, but it doesn't deserve that rap.
Something either has a test for it or it doesn't. For
Who knows, maybe String Theory and ID are indeed related. The one way to prove Strings exist may be to tap into a string by meditating at a Temple/Mosque/Church and have God pick up another String and we can jam to some tunes on Guitar Hero together.
Seriously though, I am not saying that String does not exist. Just that you have no scientific basis for it. And it has nothing to do with the word "Theory".
String = fancy math
Well, I expected more than a curt dismissal.
I will try again. 1) "maybe someone will figure out [a test]" simply does not apply to ID. 2) ID does more than ask you to believe that it's science. It asks you to actively disbelieve well-documented scientific evidence.
If I can't persuade you to see this distinction, then your antipathy for String looks like bigotry no matter how valid your other points are.
Fancy math is better than a lie.
What if one day, while analyzing DNA we had found a signature in the code left behind by God. A message from "Him" saying something like:
"Hey, if you can read this you are driving too close!"
Being God, he would know about bumper stickers and make a message like that all the more impressive, especially if has been in our genetic code for a long ass time.
Which evidence? The creationist ID mayhaps, as a 10,000 young Earth is clearly wrong. But ID in of itself doesn't ask you to disbelieve a single thing. ID only states that some designer designed it all. And is pulling all the strings mysteriously.
Look, ID could never have been thought up and I would still say that String is not science. There are no observables, no data, no experiments. Not to mention the fact that these things would need to be reproduceable as well.
If it makes you feel better, I retract my ID relation. None the less, the rest I said stands. String is not science -- end story.
Science != Math
A very soap box topic, take it there and I will gladly respond in more detail. In a nutshell - ID is not a lie -- it is just not science.
Not Science != A lie
To call it a lie, you would need actual scientific data. Hence the Catch-22 with ID and why people gobble it up.
Only all the evidence for Evolution. The claim that Evolution cannot be correct is the entirety of ID. The "Intelligent Falling" parody pretty much nails it -- 1) gravity is a lie 2) things still fall down, so... 3) what about this?
Clever, but insufficient. The evidence for speciation over time is too strong. Even a miraculous divine calling card would only say, "Oh, that's how this whole Evolution business got started, huh?" Yet the theory of ID specifically precludes Evolution. If God signed his work it would be something of a Pyrrhic victory for fundies -- now God did it AND we are still descended from apes. Yay! Unless of course God steps in and says he planted all that evidence, in which case the Universe could have sprung into being last Thursday, calling uniformitarianism and causality into question and basically exploding all science, everywhere. Hm!
It does make me feel better (though I get the feeling that your retraction is more concession than agreement). String can be "not science" -- as I said, I don't have the chops to argue that one with you (moreover, I don't necessarily disagree with you). I only want to save it from being binned alongside the likes of ID.
Bringing something as contentious as 'intelligent design' into the argument, derails the discussion from 'String Theory' to 'ID is Bunk, don'tchya know'.
It's one of those toxic meme things.
Sure, string theory has drawbacks like no practical experiments to verify any claims, but that's something they're working on. It might, actually, be a junk theory, like the flat earth, but it has certain aspects which appeal; especially the mathematical jiggerypokery you can do if you use 10 (or 11) dimensions rather than the 4 we're used to (x,y,z,time).
I don't have anything to ADD to the understanding of string theory, rather I think it's especially odious to bring in another highly charged subject as a 'comparison', because ID has all sorts of problems, whether you accept it or not. Leave it for an ID Theory thread, not a String Theory thread.
Let me clue you in on something about science. Competing theories are aloud in science, the only caveat is that they have evidence for support. The science community rejects ID, not because it conflicts with Evolution, but b/c it has no scientific basis, no evidence, no experimentation, no reproduceable data. Just like string.
In ID debates, it has been made quite clear that whether Evolution is right or not has nothing to do with the validity of ID. Check the old ID/Evo debates in the Soap Box.
That parody is cute and funny but has no real bearing on anything. From an unbiased viewpoint it isn't really analogous to ID.
ID's argument is that everything is "too complex" to have happened solely by random chance. A greater power guided the development of organisms. That is all ID says in a nut shell. Different forms of ID can and are mutually exclusive with Evolution, but other forms of ID work with Evolution. I assure you, I have had these moronic debates with people who try to push the crap as science. And at the end of the day, it isn't science b/c there is no empiracle aspect to the theory.
The same is true for String.
Well, I will give you that String has some cool math associated with it. So in that light it isn't like ID at all. String is a form of mathematics.
But from the eyes of science, ID and String don't qualify for the same exact reasons. That fact may burn a little, but it doesn't make it any less true.
I disagree. ID has been debated to death on the Ars forums and in a well done non-biased manner might I add. And every single argument against ID being science applies directly to String in this case. They both don't qualify for the same reasons. I think it is a very fitting analogy.
Sadly, even "flat earth" is science. Why? Because it postulates variables that you can test for validity. I can think of a couple different experiments right off the top of my head. Science is about asking a question and answering it by measuring something.
Flat earth is wrong, clearly. String on the other hand is this magic black box that we have no idea how to test. The day may come, where someone may be able to figure out a way to do so. Then it would be science, but for now - it is just some fancy math with no bearing in reality.
Well, I think the main reason that ID is rejected is that not only is it not currently falsifiable, it is not falsifiable in principle, ever. It clearly cannot be science if you can invoke a deity to explain away any and all counterexamples.
What about string theory? Well, I certainly think it is more math than physics at this point. But here is the difference with ID: while it may not happen to be falsifiable now because no one has yet succeeded in teasing out a prediction testable in an accessible energy scale, it is plausible that some day someone will find a prediction to test. That is to say, it is not impossible. in principle as it is with ID.
Now then, it becomes a question of how much effort is it worth putting into this potential physical theory before giving up. Certainly different people will have different opinions on this question, and it can be debated. But let's be honest, this is the real question for string theory, and it is not the same "question" as with ID.
From a scientific stand point you can't make an assertion like that. How do you know that ID would never, ever be falsifiable? For now it isn't but who knows how far ID will advance in 100 years?
ID by definition states that God did it, but how do you know that we'll never find out a way to communicate with "Him/Her"?
It is completely unknown and is part of how faith works. There is absolutely no proof that there is no God. That is why atheists crack me up just as much as the fundies.
Honestly, I think String should be studied for as long as needed. I have no issue with the math and phys boys for investing brain power into it for the next 30, 50, or 100 years. The math itself is fascinating and has applications in other fields.
Just don't call it science in the meantime.
I made no claim as to the existence or non-existence of God. All I am saying is that if your theory admits no possible counterexamples, because any and all proposed counterexamples can be immediately met with the explanation that "all-powerful god (whether seen or unseen) did that" then the theory is clearly not falsifiable. There is no possible observation that can ever be held up to disagree with it. It is not falsifiable. It is not science.